Beyond Antimicrobials: The Prebiotic Path to Healing SIBO, IMO and Dysbiosis with Guy Daniels

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Guy Daniels, who has a master's degree in nutrition from Florida State University and has been in the functional natural integrative medicine industry for more than 20 years. He served as the director of medical education for the microbiome division at Thorne for 5 of the 13 years he spent there. He now helps people all over the world with gut health issues, not by focusing on killing microbes, fermented foods, probiotics, or radical diets, but focusing instead on changing the gut environment to favor the health promoters who have been sidelined due to exposures like excessive antibiotic use. He does this in a variety of unique ways, first and foremost being the intelligent use of properly blended prebiotics. But before conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. If you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool or functional medicine test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Guy.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

So excited to have you here.

So since I have covered SIBO and EMO on this podcast ad nauseam, we're gonna jump right into an advanced discussion of SIBO. So let's talk about how SIBO affects absorption of nutrients in the small intestine and what common patterns are seen in SIBO patients.

Okay. So I work with a tremendous number of SIBO people. In fact, my most popular protocol is SIBO with constipation. And so those— I have protocols and then I have the consultations themselves. Let's start with what is SIBO, right? So SIBO is basically the permission that you've given to bacteria to be allowed to creep on up the GI tract. How have you given them permission? By various lifestyle factors, such as, for example, taking PPIs, right? Right? You take PPIs, you drop the stomach acid, et cetera, or you've had antibiotics over the years and a lot of courses, and this is very, very common. I see this, this is the most common thing I see. I would say about 70% of the time, the root cause for people's GI and other extra GI issues is excessive antibiotic use. So what does that do? That's a slow process, sometimes a quick process, but usually a slow process. Of killing off the good guys in the lower gut and the upper gut as well, and actually all over the body because you get into yeast infections, et cetera, et cetera, with antibiotics. But in, in the context of SIBO, you're killing off the, the good guys and the bad guys in lower gut, but the bad guys come back more robustly and they wanna control the environment. So what is SIBO? SIBO is bad guys from dysbiosis creeping up from the lower gut and the permission in the upper gut to let them take up residency there. Now, there's always a, there's always a microbiome in every part of the body, and there's a typical supposedly healthy microbiome in the upper GI. You get the duodenum, the jejunum, et cetera. But that can change because if you have bile acid dysmetabolism, one of the things that keeps that microbiome in where it's supposed to be is a correct balance of your bile acids, which come out as you Eat a meal with fat, et cetera, et cetera. Other part is stomach acid, right? Other part is gut motility. And now this other part is too many bugs creeping up the gut that are too high in number and not the right composition. So what do they do? Oftentimes they slow down motility. So you get this ileal breaking going on. You're not able to digest fats properly. So you get into ileal breaking with that. Because your bile acid metabolism is off. So everything slows down and because it's all slowed down and there's, that allows for more fermentation. And that's where we get to our methanogens. Everyone's always blaming all methanogens with the methanogens. The methanogens are there, right? Your methane producers are there because they're allowed to be there. They're not normally supposed to be there, but because things have slowed down to a crawl, and because they have permission to be there, because they're the final consumers, the end stage, right? They're just, they're just taking the scraps that are left over. But if you're moving things along in the upper GI, they can't survive that dynamic environment. If you have proper bile acid metabolism, they can't survive that dynamic either. They're not the guilty party. The guilty party is actually you, the person who has given these bugs permission to be there. Now, to come to your question, Is so now bile acid dysmetabolism, dysmetabolism, you're not absorbing your fats properly, so you have more fats working their way down to the lower GI. If you're using PPIs or have a history of prior PPI use, have low HCl, you have too much protein reaching the small and ultimately the lower GI as well. There's extra fermentation going on there. And then of course you have the carbohydrates. Which are doing too much fermentation in the upper GI as well due to the slow motility. Then you have with, along with that, you get inflammation and you get improper absorption of the nutrients that you're trying to absorb in the small intestine.

So how do you get to the point where you have disrupted bile acid metabolism? What's going on there?

So this is an important thing that people are not talking about. I'm really the only person talking about this, and this has been the case for many years. Bile acids impact the microbiome. The microbiome impacts bile acids. It's a two-way street. What happens in the body is primarily secreted into the duodenum are what are called primary bile acids. Okay? Cholic acid, deoxycholic acid, and they're conjugated usually with either taurine and glycine. So they're supposed to come in, but there's technically, there's, there's really a mix. There's a, there's a, there's actually like, I don't know, it's something like 40, 50, 60, something like more than that bile acids, but there's really only a handful that are key and crucial. Important. These bile acids are supposed to come in, help with absorption of fats and fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A, vitamin E, et cetera. But they do much more than that because they are hormones as well. And not only do they plug into receptors in the GI tract, they plug into receptors outside of the GI tract as far away as the brain. They are very powerful hormones. Now, what's supposed to happen is, is supposed to be deconjugated. In other words, the taurine or the glycine's supposed to be kind of, you know, separated from the bile acid itself, the primary bile acid. And as they travel further on down to the ileum and into the duodenum, they're supposed to be then broken apart again and become secondary bile acids. Now, there's a tremendous amount of data to show these secondary bile acids are beneficial, and there's also a tremendous amount of data to show that the good guys, generally speaking, the really good guys, and there's only a handful of them, are responsible for making this transition to primary bile acids to secondary bile acids. And these handful of good guys are very susceptible to antibiotics. So when you get to the classic ultimate case of dysbiosis, which is a C. diff infection, right? What is that? That is, and there's a ton of data to show this, there are too many primary bile acids, the chief culprit being torocholate. So which is your cholic acid, the primary bile acid, which is still bound to taurine. And that enables C. diff, which we all are gonna have at some point in the course of a year. We're all gonna have C. diff spores in our, in our body that allows C. diff to become particularly nefarious and dangerous and potentially deadly. So that's kind of the cycle of events of how the microbiome is affecting the bile acids and the bile acids in turn affect the microbiome. By being antimicrobial in nature. So as you secrete the bile acids into the, into the duodenum after a meal, then they are actually, you know, detergent in nature and they're killing off these, not all because there are some bacteria like bilophila, et cetera, which are resistant to bile acids, but there are also a bunch which are culprits in SIBO, which, who are potentially killed or are killed by these bile acids in the upper GI. So it has an antibacterial nature as well. And this is gut, gut motility. And like I said, there's a hormonal component in the liver, in the pancreas. So part of this too, as well with SIBO, is when you have all these extra bugs in the upper GI driving this fermentation, you would think that the, the duct between the liver and the gallbladder and the pancreas is sterile, but it's actually been shown that it's not the case. And that actually gets quote unquote contaminated as well with SIBO, you have this different microbiome in that, in that area as well. So, and then that starts affecting gallbladder and your pancreas. So when you change your bile acids properly, now you're affecting, because everyone's taking enzymes, now you're affecting pancreatic enzyme production better when you have a proper blend of bile acids. This is just one big loop and everything's all connected, not just here but in the entire body. And so people are always, Okay, I'm gonna take enzymes and I'm gonna take HCl and I'm gonna take this, but they're always just plugging holes in the dike and not, they're not addressing all aspects of what's going on.

Can you explain ileal breaking a little bit?

So basically when you have too many fats reaching a destination in the lower small intestine that shouldn't be there because they should have been absorbed previously, the ileum just kind of comes through a, the small intestine comes through a screeching halt. And, and basically says, okay, we're, we're taking in enough foods. We don't need anymore. You need to absorb those fats, those proteins, and those, you know, those carbs further up the GI. Otherwise they're sus— they're subject to, to fermentation in the lower GI. Now, when it comes to carb fermentation, lower GI, we, we're, you were supposed to have a bunch of that, that, that's what we call fiber, what we call prebiotics, which prebiotics is actually not defined correctly. But anyway, so prebiotics, the good, the good ones are sugars or carbs that are locked up behind bonds that we can't access. So those are the ones we want to go to the lower GI. That's, that's what, those are what feeds the good guys. But we don't want, you know, the, the more simple sugars and, you know, and the carbs and the fats and the proteins. We don't want those guys going to GI. Some will by their very nature, some will, but too much. It's like with a carnivore diet, So if you take the carnivore diet, which is just all protein and fat, there's a whole bunch more protein working its way down to the lower GI for fermentation, but the bad guys tend to like to ferment protein. So that's where we get into problems with carnivore.

Yeah.

I see a lot of people with hydrogen sulfide SIBO who are former carnivore or keto, you know, they got into a bad situation there. So I can tell from listening to your videos that you are among the small cadre of gut health specialists that I sort of include myself in, who look disfavorably upon the traditional approaches of killing off microbes with strong antimicrobial herbs and antibiotics in dysbiosis and SIBO and EMO. So I'm wondering how and why you arrived at that place.

Sure. So, uh, years ago I spent quite a few years as the, um, director of medical education for a microbiome firm.. And I spend most of my time, and honestly, I still spend most of my time doing research, just reading paper after paper after paper, literally thousands and thousands of paper papers. And I take meticulous notes. I have a massive Excel sheet. After you read, because initially I walked into this whole thing thinking, okay, yeah, because I've, I've been in this industry for decades and like, I, I come from, okay, yes, oregano oil and yes, probiotics and blah, blah, blah. Once you start going through the data meticulously, it's like, wait a second, this is not how we should be doing things. And I was fortunate enough in my prior position to be able to implement my philosophy in a trial which had a, had a 100% success rate, which doesn't happen. What I saw repeatedly and what I see repeatedly to this day is that there are a number of good bugs who are basically almost all butyrate producers who are very sensitive to antibiotics. And I just actually just launched a huge, it's a very long, very comprehensive video on antibiotics in the microbiome. It's, it's really a crucial understanding of what's going on with the microbiome. It's very pivotal. These guys are susceptible and the bad guys, you can't kill them off. They are normal E. coli, And Klebsiella and Enterococcus, all these guys, they are normal inhabitants of the microbiome. And whether it's a UTI or whether it's IBS or Crohn's or whatever happens to be, you're not going to kill them all off. They're going to survive in the reservoir, which is the gut. Most UTIs come from the gut, so they're going to survive there. They're going to kind of curl up in their little protective shell, right? And they're going to Survive the day, which are the only thing you're gonna succeed in doing is killing off the good guys, allowing the bad guys to come back even stronger the next time. And this is, there is a tremendous amount of data to show all of this. And even with these natural antimicrobials, I mean, I work with tons of people from all over the world. They've all done oregano oil and berberines and neem and the list goes on. They've all, and garlic products. They've done all these before. They have done all the antibiotics, the Rifaximin and You name it, the list goes on. And they've all done the probiotics. We can talk about that as well. That's a whole nother conversation, but this whole philosophy of bug killing really has to change. I mean, you could think about this in different ways, but I mean, we can go back to C. diff. We can do other examples. So let's go back to C. diff. It's a good example. Again, every one of us in the course of a year, more or less, is going to ingest a spore or more of C. diff. It's a very, very, very hardy spore. You have to like nuke it to kill it, right? It's everywhere. It's in the food, it's on, it's in your shoes, it's on your, it's on your pets. It's everywhere. It's, it's on door handles. It's everywhere. So why is it that the vast majority of us have no problem with C. diff, whereas a small percentage of us who have had an excessive number of antibiotics, because that is the clear far and away number one risk factor for a C. diff infection is excessive antibiotic use. It can kill them. Why is that? Because they are dysbiotic. They have far too many bad bugs who've been killed off, who've thrived in the absence of the good bugs controlling them. So instead of this kill, kill, kill mentality, what we want is nourish the good guys that are still down there. And instead of trying to outsmart what's going on down there, nourish the good guys, let them regain control of the environment and let them keep these bad actors who are called opportunistic pathogens for a reason, because if you give them an opportunity, they'll become pathogenic. Let the good guys control them, control the environment, and keep the bad guys in check. It's a simple philosophy, I think.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, I have seen countless stool tests where zero Fecalibacterium prausnitzii, zero Akkermansia muciniphila, very typical profile for someone who's taken a lot of antibiotics or antimicrobials. Now only now do we actually have, I don't know if you know that there's a, there's one company that has a, uh, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in a probiotic and, and at least a couple with Akkermansia.

Yeah, I, I know there's a couple with Akkermansia and honestly I've had, so Akkermansia is interesting. So for one, it's very beneficial in certain conditions, like say metabolic syndrome, the data is excellent. However, if you do a meta-analysis, uh, for dementia, for Parkinson's, for colorectal cancer.

Even excess.

And every study, when there's a significant difference between those with a condition and those, the healthy controls, the Amycynophila is always significantly higher in those with a condition.

Yeah. Does it coincide with constipation in those cases?

Constipation? I haven't seen that. I've seen it with, with, again, with dementia, Parkinson's, colorectal cancer. And I might be forgetting one condition.

I, I only ask that when I see excess akromancia, it's almost always in someone who's constipated.

Okay. Okay. And again, it's, oh, you know what the other one is? Ulcerative colitis. That's another one. That's the other one. That's the one I was forgetting. So to err on the side of caution, I would certainly not recommend any Amucinophila for those folks. Now, I actually don't recommend it anyway because I've heard from a number of people who've had bad experiences with the product, one of those products in question. So what I opt to do instead is to feed whatever Amycina phyla is remaining down there. So what do you feed that with? And I talk about this in my, my video on Amycina phyla. It likes mucus, but you can't really feed it mucus, but you can feed the good guys.

Exactly.

That, that's where I was gonna go next. So, but you can feed the good guys who produce butyrate, who then ultimately produce mucus, and then Amycina phyla is happy, and then it kind of cross feeds the good guys. So one way to increase amucinophiles by increasing the good guys, the period producers. The other way is with, it seems to love phytochemicals, right? So you get into things like pomegranates and cranberries and things like that. You can feed it using those as well. So again, we come back to, 'cause I, I'm not a probiotic person at all. I like to feed the good guys that are down there and let them control the environment.

Yeah. No, I started doing a gut shake that I stole off of Mark Hyman. And recommend to a lot of my clients with the, with cranberry and with pomegranate in there. And sure enough, I had my most recent microbiome sequencing that was the most diverse I've ever seen. I had every single phylum present and in decent percentages, which was, yeah, nice and refreshing cuz I've had, you know, lifelong gut health issues and domination of E. coli and such because I have autoimmune from post-infectious IBS. I have elevated vinculin antibodies. So I'm curious. From thinking about treating SIBO from a root cause perspective, given somebody like me and many of my clients who have a broken migrating motor complex, is there a better way to— does the same thing apply to us as to anybody else who has a different root cause for SIBO?

Well, part of that equation is serotonin, right? So we can feed serotonin with tryptophan. To get the gut motility going. So again, I'm not sure how much of that is the actual core root cause, whereas how much of that is a consequence of what's happened with the, the presence of the micro— the gut, the extra bacteria being there. But part of those, for those who do have slow GIs, I like to use tryptophan.

Yeah.

Why tryptophan and why not 5-HTP? Couple reasons. One, you can give tryptophan in gram doses, whereas 5-HTP is milligram dose. Number 2, and probably equally important, or if not more, is 5-HTP is one step closer to serotonin. So you might, you, if you actually did a little experiment and took, say, 500 milligrams of 5-HTP on empty stomach, you would more than likely have nausea and you might vomit. So we don't, we want kind of this gradual release of serotonin through the gut and actually going to the brain as well for those with, you know, any mental health issues like depression, anxiety. So we want to get a larger dose down there. We want to get more delayed dose in the, actually in the serotonin production. So that's part of it. So I, I use a fair amount of tryptophan in a number of people, but it's certainly not for all people because you, you have other people who have, for example, say things are going to be moving too quickly.

Yeah.

Like with diarrhea, right? So that's, you would not use tryptophan with someone with diarrhea. So Why is that? Because with diarrhea, you tend to have a lot of mast cell activity. Okay. And mast cells release some 30-some-odd chemicals, one of which is serotonin. Serotonin is a double-edged sword. So it's part of the inflammatory cascade as a part of the mast cells. So you increase their mast cell content of serotonin, the mast cells release again, and boom, you just, you just worsen diarrhea. So that's part of it. But I would, I tend to try to focus more on just correcting the microbiome and the bile acid dysmetabolism and the immune dysregulation, which always accompanies everything to get things going in some people. Now, there is a very small percentage of people who, for whatever, I, you could throw everything with, including the kitchen sink at them, and they still have very slow GI motility. And there's, and there's a couple actual conditions out there. Where it's like, that's just, that, that's in their genes. That's, you know, it's just, it's just, you, you, it's hard to change that. So there's a small percentage, about 1, 2, 3% where you can throw everything at them and, and in full disclosure, I mean, 'cause no one has a 100% success rate and, and usually it affects the stomach. So it's usually stomach, let's say like a gastritis type of scenario going on and delayed gastric emptying. And then you get into the slow motility in the upper GI. And those are kind of tied together a little bit. Those are, are more of the challenging people. Second most challenging is high histamine, but I, I, I can get past that. It's just whether they can tolerate the whole process or not. But yes, so there are some, but generally speaking, you can get things moving along. Like my, my success rate with constipation is, is absolutely astronomical.

Yeah.

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Yeah. So why do you dislike the low FODMAP diet for long-term management of SIBO or EMO?

So years ago I was researching everything there was to research, and I looked at all the studies I could find, all the human fecal microbiome studies using the low FODMAPs diet compared to healthy controls. And I have a video on this as well. And what did I find? That in fairly short order, the good bugs were significantly reduced in multiple, in more than half, half to more than half of these studies. So what is the low FODMAPs diet? There's an aspect of it that I do agree with, but for a different reason. They want to take out dairy because they want to take out the lactose. Okay. Which if you have lactose intolerance, you already know that you have diarrhea, whatever, but they want to take out the lactose. They wanna keep it from fermenting. That's why they don't recommend lactose. I want to take out dairy products because I don't want you reacting to the dairy proteins. Dairy proteins are by far, far and away the number one food group that you're going to react to if you have something going on. They are horrible if you have constipation, they are atrocious if you have ulcerative colitis, they are not a good idea. And sometimes the cause of, for example, type 1 diabetes, prob— very problematic in autoimmune disease. And the list goes on. So if you are dysbiotic, taking out the dairy proteins, which is my angle, is an excellent idea to be a part of the process because we don't want to keep adding offensive agents. We don't wanna keep reoffending and reoffending the body, keeping it in inflammatory state. We're trying to bring down inflammation. We're trying to reduce the offenses while we're trying to heal. So I agree with them in taking out the dairy, but for a different reason. Now the rest of it, I understand why they're doing it. They're doing it to reduce symptoms, which it does. It does do that. If you look at the trials, most of the trials have success rates in reducing gas and bloating. I get that. Agreed. You can do the same thing with carnivore. Agreed. That's not to say these are good long-term solutions. So, and I, again, I have a video on this topic as well. So what are you doing when you do a low FODMAPs diet? You are taking away the very fuels these prebiotics that the good bacteria love. So if you're going to take away their substrate, their fuel, they're not going to thrive. So they're going to go down in abundance. It's just, it's just logical. And the studies show this. So what you're getting is, and this is what we do very often in medicine, is we're looking for temporary relief, but for long-term bad consequences. Right? So Yes, your gas and bloating has gone down. Congratulations. But you're not addressing the root cause. You're just addressing the symptoms of gas and bloating. And ultimately you're going to make things worse if you continue on the diet. And again, I've had many times in my consultations, I hear the same things over and over again. Guy, I've tried every diet possible to include low FODMAPs, carnivore, vegan, the list goes on. Guy, I've tried every supplement possible, tried every bug killer. Berberines, oregano oils, prescription bug kills, Rifaximin, the list goes on. You know, the, these people have tried everything before and they're still having these problems and oftentimes getting worse. And I say, yes, I know, I hear you. Like I've heard this a million times. Let's try something different.

Yeah. And so do you dislike FOS, GOS, XOS for the same reasons or is there different, different cause?

Yes. So I would, I never recommend those, especially for someone with SIBO, right? Those are, those are basically inulin. Okay. Which have been, you know, snipped up. I mean, inulin's FOS, but you could just, you know, they're all in the same family. They're all the prebiotics which have been snipped to tiny, tiny pieces, which are rapidly fermentable. So, and I've seen this in people before in consultation, I'm like, and they're like, well, my doctor recommended this. Well, your doctor doesn't, should know better. So you're gonna send these snipped up prebiotics, which are gonna ferment rapidly into what's called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So what's gonna happen? They're going to be rapidly fermented in the upper GI where you have too much fermentation going on. There are different prebiotics which offer up different complexities of structure. Like pectin is rather complex, for example. So it takes a while to ferment pectin, right? So Again, with SIBO, you don't wanna make things worse while you're trying to make things better. So yes, JOS, FOS, they have good test tube data. Sure, they increase Bifidobacterium. Everything increases bifido practically, right? There's so much stuff that increases bifido, but I don't care about bifido. It's gonna be increased anyway in the course of while I'm doing things. What I care about is F. prausnitzii. What I care about is species from Ruminococcus, Carpiococcus. You know, Eubacterium, all these bugs that no one's ever heard of before. And why haven't they heard about them before? Because they're too sensitive to put into on-the-shelf probiotics. They're oxygen sensitive, right? And so they're not available. And so you can't be marketed them. And so you haven't heard of them, but these are the actual true health promoters, not especially not lactobacillus. Lactobacillus has terrible data and Bifidobacterium has okay data, but it, it is nothing compared to these other guys.

I wanna come back to the lactobacillus question, but since you worked for Thorne and you talk a lot about prebiotics, I thought, well, why don't I look at the products that Thorne has? And so I looked at the Fiber Mend, which had pectin, partially hydrolyzed guar gum, AKA sun fiber, right? And were those the primary ingredients?

Yeah, it's, it's the primary is partially hydrolyzed guar gum at 8 grams, and then you got There's some rice bran in there, 3 grams.

Oh, right.

Yes.

I remember that.

Yeah.

There's some window dressing dosing for the arabinogalactans.

Yeah. Yes. Were you involved in developing that product?

And, and, and pectin and pectin as well. Okay. No, no, that was, that was developed by someone else during my time there.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

But it's, it's a product I recommend often because, because partially hydrolyzed guar gum again will increase Bifidobacterium. People seem to be obsessed with Bifidobacterium, but again, it also increases other good guys, other butyrate good guys. And the rice bran is not the dose. I mean, I, I recommend other rice bran in addition to that because I aggressively use the basically blends of prebiotics that are properly blended to suit the needs of the individual that are blended properly and also dosed properly along with other ancillary products because and here's the thing to consider as well, because everyone before has tried inulin, everyone before has tried whatever, right? But they usually tried it with something like 7 grams a day or 8 grams a day or something like that. So if you give someone one prebiotic dose to say 7 grams a day, you're not gonna get very full. You, you'll be probably treading water. You might even get worse. So why is that? Because again, there's But this data show this. First of all, when you drive things with just one prebiotic, you're actually reducing what's called what, what's healthy diversity. 'Cause alpha diversity is stupid. Alpha diversity is just how many different bugs are there, but you can have a bunch of bad bugs. So if you're just using just one prebiotic, you're reducing healthy diversity. And if you're using, using a low dose, then you're probably just feeding at least half or more than half the bad guys. Because some of these bad guys who were there were dominating the environment in the dysbiotic gut. Some of those species can use some of these prebiotics for their own fuel. So when they're down there, the pH of the gut, right, what's, you know, the lumen, that empty space, is not in the Goldilocks zone, which is roughly 5.5 to 6.5. So if it's outside that pH, lower or higher, The bad guys will be dominating and they're gonna go, oh, look, a little bit of partially hydrolyzed guar gum. I can use that. Oh, look, a little bit of pectin. I can use that. And they're gonna be able to outcompete the good guys because the good guys cannot compete outside of their Goldilocks zone pH. And there's data to show this as well. So what we need to do is intelligently drive that pH into that 5.5 to 6.5 range. So the good guys can then, and it's a process, and I will admit the first 2, 3 weeks with me can be a bit bumpy where, okay, now the good guys are, they're now starting to consume more and more of these prebiotics and now they're outcompeting the bad guys. The bad guys are going, oh wait, this isn't my pH. I don't function well here. Like, okay, I'm just gonna go sit in the sidelines.

And so are most people coming from a place that's more alkaline or more acidic than that?

I would say generally speaking, it's more alkaline.

Okay.

And again, not that anyone's measuring the pH of the, of the gut other than with, when, when in a trial. But I would say as a general rule, it's, it's above that. It's like around 7 or 7.1, 7.2, something like that. But then there's also those who are below that as well. And Lactobacillus will, will survive and thrive in both of those ranges. So whether it's a low pH or a high pH.

So wouldn't that imply then if they're more alkaline that they've got more bile acids go flowing? 'Cause doesn't that alkalinize the gut?

Well, the bile acids, more bile acids. Well, the bile acid quantity would still be the same. It would be the composition, right? So the composition would change and that would change with pH. So you would have a healthy composition from 5.5 to 6.5, right? And if it's outside that range, now you have something that's dominated by the bad guys. Again, the, the good guys are sidelined if they're even present. And then the bad guys are saying, well, okay, well we're not gonna see, you got dehydrogenase, dehydroxylase. The second step is dehydroxylation. We're not gonna dehydroxylate primary bile acid into a secondary bile acid. So we're just gonna have this overabundance of primary bile acids, some of which are still bound to these amino acids, taurine and, and glycine. Oh. So it's, it's really not a content thing, it's more of a composition thing.

So, but it's all about in, in any case, it's all about feeding the right prebiotics to the gut microbes to change the composition, which then changes the pH.

Right, exactly, exactly. And the same prebiotics are not the good prebiotics for all people, right? A prebiotic for someone's gonna worsen— prebiotic A for someone with diarrhea is gonna worsen diarrhea.

Of course. Yeah.

Prebiotic B for someone with constipation is gonna worsen their constipation. So it has to be, you know, and you have to understand.

Yeah.

Which prebiotics feed which bacteria. And I've done all the meta-analysis on this as well. I have to look, looked at all, all human studies, fecal microbiome studies, and all humanized in vitro microbiome studies when prebiotics were used and try to see, okay, which bugs are they driving? And so like, for example, the best example of this is inulin feeding Bifidobacterium. There is an enormous amount of data. It's, it's, it's just, it's ridiculous. And I'm on a data on this. So everyone in the world knows that inulin feeds Bifidobacterium. There's a number of species it feeds. Okay, fine. But still, is my concern is the largely the healthy, you know, the health-promoting, beauty producers, but also is inulin right for you because it's not right for some people. So it's, it's a blend of a number of different things to, to come to the right recipe for a given person.

Yeah. And I mean, what about the role of food in all this as opposed to just added prebiotics? I, for one, personally, when I, for various reasons, had to convert my diet from higher in meat to much higher in beans and lentils, huge difference in the results for me personally.

Right. Oh, certainly. I mean, you have, you want to feed the good guys with your diet, but you also want to introduce fewer insults into the body as well, like with the dairy proteins. So that, that's a component of it as well. But another thing I hear all the time is, Guy, I eat as healthy as I can. I mean, I eat, I have a healthy diet, I still can't get better. And I say, yes, I know. I've heard that a million times as well. So why is that? Let's just take your average person who's 50 years old, has been on 40 rounds of antibiotics. I mean, this is, I've seen people with well over 100 rounds of antibiotics. So let's just take someone who's 50, been on 40 rounds of antibiotics over the course of their life. And some other things happened as well, whatever, whatever it was, PPIs, whatever. So then they tried wacky diets for years and that made them worse. So at this point, the gut is really broken, right? You have these bad guys are so dominant in this gut and the good guys are, if they're there, are just so completely sidelined that you really can't turn that ship around with just diet alone. You would think you could, you would think you could, right?, but you can't. And I, I've just seen it again and again. So, you know, and again, you have bile acid dysmetabolism. How you, how are you gonna change that with diet? How do you change that with diet? Right? You can't. So, and you have, you know, this hyper-inflammatory, hypervigilant immune system. Okay, well, if you can't change that, turn that boat around, you're not gonna turn that, that immune system around either. So what we have to do is we have to drive significant change in which to drive it quickly so we can make that environmental shift in pH and other things. So the good guys are in charge, which is pre— using properly blended and dosed prebiotics suited to the needs of the individual. But it's also other ancillary support to address the bile acid dysmetabolism, to at least begin to bring down that hypervigilant immune system that's always on alert, alert, attack, attack. And it just wants to fight anything it sees. It's kind of addressing this from multiple different angles to get you to where you need to be, to be like, okay. And again, with a diet, you don't want to introduce insults. And I would say by and large, most of my people have a pretty normal, reasonable, healthy-ish diet. You know, it's not that common, I guess, someone who's like, I'm just eating ice cream left and right and cookies. And, you know, because the people I've seen have been sick for years. They have been to see at least 10 practitioners. No one's been getting them better. They've been doing research online. They've tried everything and they're still not getting better. So their diets, and they know very, very well what foods they react to. These people know very, they know their own bodies very, very well. And they go, well, I'm high histamine. And I ask my questions, go, yes, I agree with you. And they go, okay, I can't eat this. And the weirdest things happen. Like I hear things, I'm like, Wow. Like you would never think that would happen eating that food. Now they, people just, they know their bodies really well, but they can't get out of this endless spiral of hell of, you know, my immune system's a mess and I'm dysbiotic and which is driving the immune system. And so like, how do I get out of this spiral to hell? And that's, you know, I'm able to help these people the vast majority of the time.

Yeah. So you mentioned pectin and rice bran. And PHGG. Any other prebiotics that you really like?

Yes, I have videos on all the ones that I like. So I have the 3 you just mentioned. I have arabinogalactans, I have inulin, I have resistant starch, I have psyllium. I think that's everybody.

Hey, this is Lindsey here. Just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. That's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners, but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session, or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show.

Yeah.

Okay. And let's go back to the lactobacilli question. So why do you think they're a bad idea in SIBO? Cuz I kind of go back and forth, like I have some people who react to them and personally, like I can't, if I eat a whole thing of yogurt, I blow up like a balloon, but yet I can take one pill of probiotics with lactobacilli and not have an issue. And I know that Biogaia Gastris with the L. rhamnosus it's the very particular name of the strain is, is, you know, recommended by a lot of gut health experts for constipation. So I'm just curious how you, how you came to dislike all lactobacilli or if that's in fact the case.

Well, I don't, lactobacillus, the data for lactobacillus, I'm very data-driven, but I also have experience as well for many years. So the data for lactobacillus in vaginal health is excellent. Okay. So I wouldn't say I dislike all lactobacillus. So you have L. crispatus and you have some others, L. gasseri, that play prominent roles in vaginal health. That's, that's, that's an aside. Lactobacillus tends to have pretty good data for infants as well. So now we take apart those, those two smaller groups, we take them apart. Now let's deal with everyone else with all these gut issues. The data for Lactobacillus is terrible for in, in most of us adults. With dysbiosis. If you look at, and again, now about 3 years ago, Lactobacillus was split up into a number of different similar down sounding genera. So when I say Lactobacillus, I'm referring to the old Lactobacillus prior to the reclassifications a few years ago, the names that all of us are familiar with. Okay. So which is basically most your Lactobacillus. It's a huge genus, by the way. So anyway, but we're only talking about like, generally speaking, like 10 or 12 species. So the data is atrocious. If you look, and I have many slides and many videos on this, whether it's Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, IBS, either constipation or diarrhea, Parkinson's, dementia, the list goes on and on and on and on. When you look at, again, human fecal microbiome trials comparing condition X one of those I mentioned and more, it could be COVID, could be anything else versus healthy controls. The vast, vast, vast majority of the time, those who are ill with the condition have significantly more lactobacillus in their gut than the healthy controls. That is a huge driver of my opinion of what's going on with lactobacillus. I never recommend lactobacillus and my success rates across the board are amazing. I have turned around Parkinson's in multiple people. SIBO in gazillions of people, autism, the list goes on. So Crohn's, I just, I just got yet another Crohn's, two more. I just got two more Crohn's video testimonials just in the past week, week, last week. I never recommend Lactobacillus. Why would I recommend Lactobacillus, any species, if the data consistently shows from my multiple comprehensive meta-analyses that it is significantly higher in the condition versus healthy controls. Why would you want to put more Lactobacillus in? That makes, that makes no sense to me. It even makes less sense to me if you have SIBO, which is again, you got Lactobacillus in there. Why are you putting more bacteria into a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth? Doesn't make any sense to me. Why, why would you do that? And then I get into the experience that I have where everyone's done probiotics before. Okay. And they're still talking to me, which means they're still sick. And they've all done fermented yogurt before, like the L. reuteri yogurt before, which is so popular now. And they're like, oh no, guy, I, I can't do that. I blow up or I, I become super histamine person or whatever it happens to be. Or I did it for a week and I felt better. Then I went downhill. Or I did it for a month, I didn't feel any difference. And then I went downhill. Or I did it for 2 months and I didn't feel any difference at all. At best, yes, these things can help some of the people some of the time, right? But don't you want something that helps most of the people most of the time? And you have to be concerned again about the long term. So you can say, well, Guy, I just started probiotics, or I just started fermented kefir, yogurt, whatever, a month ago, and I feel okay. Okay, good. Congratulations. However, I wanna know where you are in 3 months or 6 months. So, and, and there are people who have success using this for 3 months, 6 months, a year, et cetera. And I, I get that. I'm not trying to completely bash it. I'm just saying the data shows it makes no sense. And plus on top of that, the dysbiotic gut is a high lactate environment. Why would you want to introduce more lactate-producing bacteria into a high lactate environment? And we can split lactate into D-lactate and L-lactate. Get a lot of people out there with brain fog. So you give 'em a bunch of yogurt or, or kefir and their brain fog gets worse. They can become histamine, they become brain foggy. Why is that? 'Cause they, they're now, they're cranking out a bunch of D-lactate, which is a neurotoxin, which is now going to the brain and causing, driving some brain fog. So the data does not support this any way, shape, or form. The data supports the true health promoters, the F. prausnitzii, the Carpa caucasica species, E. rectale, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, and this goes on, Roseburia. The data is very, very clear. Across thousands of papers that these are the true health promoters that keep the pH between, you know, 5.5 and 6.5 in the lower gut, that keep the bad guys in check and keep the bile acid metabolism healthy and keep the immune system because they're producing butyrate, which has a local effect and a systemic effect where the butyrate is then impacting what's called your Th17 T regulatory immune response, which I talk about in my autoimmune videos. So Th17 is the immune system that's always looking for a fight, looking for a fight, looking for a fight. It's ready to react to everything. Whereas the T regulatory cell dominant immune system is like more kind of tranquilo, like it's more, it's more relaxed. It's like, it's more tolerant. It's like, okay, all right, I don't need to pick a fight with everything I see because if you're picking too many fights, now you're gonna start picking fights with your own tissue, AKA autoimmune disease.

So just to make it super clear, the D-lactate is produced by the lactobacilli.

Well, there are, there are a number of different bugs that can produce D-lactate. So, okay. But why would you want to increase the production of D-lactate when, when you don't have to? And on top of that, when some, you have some of your lactate consumers. So there's really, I think if I recall correctly, 3 butyrate-producing health promoters. That can take lactate and turn into butyrate, and they are very sensitive to antibiotics. So like E. hallii is one of those, and there are two species from a narrow types. So E. hallii was originally, originally classified in, in Eubacterium, was reclassified a few years ago into its own genus. And then narrow types is another butyrate-producing, healthy, health-promoting genus. And they're pretty sensitive, especially E. hallii, to antibiotics. So now you're cranking out all this lactate and now other bugs can take lactate and they can make propionate, but some of 'em are bad, like species from Veillonella. Veillonella is a genus of arputistic pathogens who can take lactate, who Veillonella usually accompanies Lactobacillus in abundance. So you see high Lactobacillus, you see high Veillonella. Why? Well, cuz Veillonella can use lactate. Lactate's a fuel for it. So it's going. Okay, I can survive in this pH really well. It's outside the Goldilocks zone. There's a bunch of Lactobacillus here, which is present in multiple, multiple conditions, producing lactate that I use for fuel. I love this fuel. So now I'm gonna increase, increase my abundance, and now I'm gonna wreak havoc on the body as well because I'm an opportunistic pathogen and I'm gonna drive inflammation and the immune system's gonna become more dysregulated because immune system's already like on attack, attack, alert, alert.

And the lactic acid that we produce when we exercise, is that the same as one of those two types of, is that L-lactate or, I don't know if that's L-lactate.

I, I would assume, I'm, I'm not sure which isomer that is, but that's kind of irrelevant because that's like in your muscles, right? We're talking like within the gut and gut health.

Right, right.

Okay. I'm just curious. So you mentioned some other root causes of SIBO. Like taking PPIs. What are some other potential root causes of that? Or, or this is beyond what I have the most infectious IBS from food poisoning and such, and the, and the antibiotics.

Food poisoning. That's a big one. So I hear that quite a bit. That kind of gets the ball rolling in some people. So you get the, the food poisoning and then you get these subsequent drugs that accompany that, right? So I hear that and usually I hear that, well, recently it's been more diverse where the places I'm hearing it from. You could say Southeast Asia eating street food, but then I've heard Europe more recently. So, you know, it could come from any place really. Another driver for not just SIBO, but for dysbiosis in general, because again, SIBO is dysbiosis from the lower gut, is alcoholism. I hear sometimes some people drinking an awful lot for quite a few years, even recreational drugs sometimes. Number one is by far and away antibiotics, by far and away. And then you get number 2. It's hard to say which number, which is number 2. You can, you could argue PPIs, you could argue alcoholism. You could certainly throw some food poisonings in there. You have, you have trauma can be in there as well. A lot of emotional trauma because stress is not particularly wonderful for the, the gut, for any, any part of you really. But I have a whole video on stress in the microbiome, which explains precisely what's going on in regards to iron. Catecholamines and so forth. So there's, you know, there, there's, there's an array of, of root causes out there.

I've also been hearing a lot about opioids really slowing the metabolism and causing that's too.

Yeah.

Well, that's part of your recreational drug can be. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it can be prescription as well, which may be prescription.

Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, that, that, that brings down things down to a screeching halt. So yeah.

Bit off subject, but what do you think of the extreme gallbladder cleanses where you're meant to eject stones rapidly over a few days?

Yeah, I have concerns about all cleanses. Yes, I have. There's a particular supplement that I love for gallbladder, liver and gallbladder health and bile acid dysmetabolism metabolism. So I don't do cleanses. I, I, I've, I have literally never recommended a cleanse to anybody. I've, I've concerns and it really gets you in these cleanses. And honestly, I've heard a number of times people feel worse after cleanses. They feel worse after basically do these detoxes, a whole bunch of detox regimens out there as well. And the, it puts them through the wringer cuz they're already weak and sick to begin with.

Yeah.

Then they go through these comprehensive exhausting detox protocols from whomever and they usually wind up feeling worse after they, they feel weaker, they feel worse, they're in worse shape, their gut's worse, everything's worse. So yeah, I don't, certainly don't wanna make anyone worse. And I've heard this so many times, I'm like, no desire to touch, you know, cleanses and detox with a 10-foot pole.

Yeah.

I wanna again, address things from more from a biochemical standpoint.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I figured.

So what do you, what is the, the supplement you like for the gallbladder?

Oh, Tuka. It's, I have a video on Tuka as well.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I've, I've started recommending that to a couple people lately cuz I, after I watched your video about the bile acids and the secondary bile acids, I thought maybe this is, this is something I should give a try to.

So I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to hearing back from, no, Tuka has, has a lot of very good data because Tuka is Utka, right? So all it is is Utka with T, taurine. Utka's a drug which has fallen outta favor in, in regards to surgery because everything's drug in surgery, right? But Utka has a very long history. That's the prescription version. Tuka is the supplement version. Which is just, mm, just slap a taurine on there and you have a very, very effective supplement.

Yeah.

Awesome.

So in your video on Candida, you talk about iron. Can you talk about how bacteria and yeast use iron to their advantage and how you would address anemia in a client with dysbiosis?

That is an excellent question. So that's a tough, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. So the connection is, is bad bugs love iron. And I talk about this in my number of videos, especially the video on emotional stress and microbiome, where you're cranking out these catecholamines. This is your epinephrine, your norepinephrine, things like this that allows the bad bugs to steal iron from you more efficiently because the body does a pretty good job normally in the healthy state of keeping iron sequestered. From the bad guys. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, you can't, no, you can't have any of this. The bad guy's like, but I really love it. I want it. It makes me grow and makes me do evil things. And the body's like, no, no, no, you can't have it. But when you're stressed right now, that presence of norepinephrine, epinephrine from the gut enables the bad guys to go like, ooh, I'm gonna steal it. And the body's like, ah, crap, I can't do anything about this. Right? So that's how your bad guys thrive when you're stressed. That's why you get sick. More easily with stress, et cetera, et cetera. At least one reason. So the bad guys love iron to grow, to become more abundant, and to become more nefarious, to become more pathogenic when it comes down to gene expression of the genes that they already have, but they now, they can express epigenetically that they weren't expressing before, right? As, as the environment becomes more inflamed, more crazy, And they become crazy, right? So the good guys don't, they don't operate in that same manner. You don't see good guys craving iron like that and just, you know, things going to hell. You don't see that pattern with good guys. You see that with E. coli, especially a number of other bad guys. Now, how do you help someone along who is anemic and dysbiotic? That's the million-dollar question. It depends on how they feel. It's their, cuz ultimately it's their decision, right? So if they feel strong enough to go through the process of rectifying the microbiome first, because when I have these people, they've been anemic for some time. And so they've been taking iron for years and they usually schedule a consultation with me because they go, Guy, I just saw your video, how the bad guys love iron. And I've been taking iron for years. So I immediately schedule a consultation with you. Like, like I'm concerned, right? And I go, yeah, they, they, the bad guys love iron. And, and it plus depends on, depends on the quantity of iron supplements taken, the form, how absorbable it is, et cetera, et cetera. So usually what I tend to discuss is, okay, how strong are you? Can you, do you need the iron? Can we go to something that's a heme iron source, like say red meat or something like that? To try to get you your iron. First of all, first of all, why do you need iron? First of all, right? What's going on? Why do you even need that? Let's try to find what, whatever root cause that is. But if you can survive, let's, it's whatever, magical reason X, if you can survive, you know, a month, 6 weeks with me, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks with me until we can rectify your microbiome, right? And then go back to your iron. And in the meantime, eat some more red meat to get you some heme iron, which is more absorbable, you know, can you do that? And usually they say yes. You go, okay, so let's fix you.

Yeah. What about just like using vitamin C to help absorb iron?

Yeah, you can use that as well. So, I mean, again, again, this is part of minimizing the insults to the body while we're trying to heal the body.

Yeah.

Right. So usually they say, okay, yes, I can do that. I can eat some more red meat and we'll fix the gut and then you know, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, cause I do see that crossing over a lot, especially with menstruating females. Obviously you've got a lot of, like, I took iron my entire life until I hit menopause and I'm just like, finally I'm free of that burden because without it I was, yeah, always very anemic.

Yeah. And, and another point of note as you bring that up as well is there is some data to show that one of the reasons that women live a little longer than men is because they've been menstruating for so many years and they've been losing iron because iron is very pro-oxidative.

Yes.

So, so people should be a little bit careful about their iron supplements.

I have, you know, this is an interesting thing because I, my husband had excess iron and had gotten to the point where he was like dizzy and falling down and that kind of thing. And I was the one who figured it out. Like his doctors did not figure it out. I was the one that figured out that this guy has way excess iron. And as soon as he gave blood, like things turned around very quickly. And yeah, I've now been a lot more attentive to that. And I, I have sent, I can't, countless number of people to give blood and say, listen, you'll live longer. Go give blood, get your iron down to optimal levels. And, you know, seeing much lower levels of ferritin now recommended, like 40 to 70 range is, is optimal. Not even, not even above 100 for men. So. That's what I've been seeing anyway.

Yeah. Well, you can see, you can look at the hemochromatosis data as well. Right, right, right. So for people who genetically accumulate iron, they, they need to give blood or else big, you know, they have big problems.

So why are prescription antifungals often unsuccessful in treating SIFO and what alternatives do you recommend?

So the, the yeast have a very quick workaround for those drugs. They just become rather resistant to them rather quickly. For example, like we can go back to yeast infections as another good example of this, where I've worked with women who've been on 100 rounds or more of antibiotics. They've been on 50 or more rounds of antifungals and they still have chronic yeast infections. So again, it's this whole bug-killing mentality, which needs to largely, unless it's an emergency, largely be thrown out the window. You need to feed the good guys, First of all, let's please not kill them. Let's try not to kill them as much. And then, and then feed the good guys that are still surviving and still there who've been sidelined. You get, and again, no one knows the answer for each individual person, but you're gonna get to a point where you keep taking these drugs, which, you know, have their toxicity effects on the liver, et cetera, anyway. And they're just, they're not gonna, they're gonna stop working. Well, I felt better on it, but now I'm off of it and now I feel equal or worse. So, well, yeah, it's a temporary benefit. Again, you're not going to kill all of the species from Candida or which, whatever fungi happens to be. They're going to, they're going to hang out in the reservoir, which is more often than not the gut, and they're going to survive and then come back another day to cause problems. You need to have an immune system that is in charge, that is robust, that is efficient., but that is ultimately tolerant to be able to take care of these things. You're not going to have that immune system if you constantly have dysbiosis, whether it's fungal dysbiosis or bacterial dysbiosis, because they're both the same. They're not the same, but they're the same. They are opportunistic pathogens. So philosophically speaking, whether you're concerned about Candida or whether you're concerned about E. coli, Klebsiella, or Enterococcus, whatever it is, It doesn't matter. They're both opportunistic pathogens who are taking advantage of a situation where they can go, hey, I can survive and thrive here. The good guys are minimized. The immune system is a mess. Bile acid system is just totally dysregulated. I'm going to take over here. It's like a bunch of— I had this one idea one time to do a video. It's like if you— there's two weddings, right? One wedding is predominated by a bunch of college students, right? And that's like 80% of the people and they're all getting drunk and they're just completely outta control 'cause there's no one to keep them in, you know, and the wedding just becomes a total disaster zone. Your other wedding is like a normal wedding where it's like you have a blend of people of all ages, kids, adults, grandparents, the whole nine yards. And it's just kind of more like a moderate kind of mellow scene where it's just a normal event and everyone, bride and groom, have a good time, right? If you, if you have these bunch of crazy college kids in charge of the gut, they're gonna do crazy things. They're just, they're just gonna be outta control down there. So you need to have an environment where they're, they are kept in check by the good actors who are controlling the environment.

So pretty much the same way of dealing with it is, is not attacking things with antimicrobials, but going at it with the prebiotics.

And yeah, I, I've resolved yeast infections in women by only addressing the gut health.

Yeah. Okay. So do you have time for one more question before we, we're getting kind of overtime?

Sure. Fire away. Fire away.

Okay. So I'm curious about what your personal gut health routine is from diet to supplements.

So I was actually diagnosed with Crohn's many years ago.

Oh, okay.

And I talk about that in my video on Crohn's. So I went from GI doc to another who were just complete idiots. Who said it was in my head or said there was nothing I could do or said I had to take prednisone for the rest of my life. So I was very, very ill. I was also anemic for a period of time. I was very light. I was 25, 30 pounds lighter than I am, 30 pounds lighter than I am now. And I was in bad shape, going to the bathroom constantly. So it took me a while to, to figure that out. And since then, my, you know, my knowledge base has just grown really exponentially. So what I do is a little bit geared towards that because for someone with Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, you're gonna have to be on a maintenance dose of something because you have this genetic, you know, genetic ability, inability to kind of keep those crypts clean from bad guys, et cetera, et cetera. Although genes are certainly not entirely the case for Crohn's. So, what I do is I will have, I have a shake, one, a prebiotic shake that's specific for my needs. Usually every day, usually most days I do. And I take a little bit of some other supplements, but I don't really have a supplement I take every day. I just take some, I kind of take it as needed. And I take a couple of supplements just for general overall health and longevity. But core of the core, what I do is, I mean, the shake is, is a big part, but I don't have something that I take every day.

You put in your prebiotic shake.

I have a blend of usually 4 different prebiotics. And then I have some glutamine I threw in there just for extra measure. And that's about, that's about it for that. I used to put a little extra, a couple extra somethings in there, but they weren't really necessary. They just more for extra, extra, extra. And then I have just a handful of other supplements I take, you know, turmeric being one of those, which is just, again, just a general health thing. Like for example, So with Crohn's, you get a lot of problems and you have to be ever vigilant. So about, I was in, I was in Mexico and I had, I had a blockage in my gallbladder and I knew it immediately because you could tell why, because the feces is white, blah, blah, blah. So which cleared on its own, whether it was a polyp or a stone, no one ever knew. So I did the ultrasound and like, oh, well you have a, you know, you have a couple polyps, maybe a stone, et cetera, et cetera. And then, and then I have this little weird kind of little fold to my to my liver. No, that's the gallbladder, I think. No, it's the liver. And I was like, okay, I need to just kind of go on the turmeric and keep on the turmeric. So, and, and since then I've had, you know, fewer pain issues there. But with Crohn's, you get, you get, you know, different things happen. You get issues with your pain in your, your, your vertebrae, your spine as well. Again, so there's two different things you have to watch out for.

Okay. Well, thank you for taking the time to stay over for a couple extra minutes and let people know where they can find you.

Sure. So, uh, my most popular format is on YouTube, The Microbiome Expert. And then you can go to my website, themicrobiomeexpert.com, where you can get more information. You can schedule a consultation with me if you want something that's more one-on-one and more personalized, or you can buy a generalized protocol, which is only $20 at this moment in time for a wide variety of needs, whether it's SIBO with constipation, SIBO without constipation, et cetera. So the list goes on.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing all this knowledge with us.

All right, thank you.

Well, if you listen to my last podcast and this one, you've probably caught onto the theme of less antimicrobials and more prebiotics, and I'm glad to have had another guest to talk to us more about the reasons behind that and some alternatives. You can support the podcast by buying supplements at a discount from my Fullscript dispensary, ordering tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab Store, or using my affiliate links to iHerb, which is available worldwide, or Amazon.. And just a note that you can use my Amazon link to buy anything, not just supplements, and support the podcast. And I see that there are definitely some of you doing this now, and I just wanted to say how much I appreciate it. In case anyone wondered, one does not get rich as a health coach. So any affiliate income that I can bring in from Amazon and other affiliate programs helps to support the podcast and the work I do with clients. That's very time-consuming. So I'd love it and really appreciate it if you'd bookmark my link and use it for regular Amazon purchases. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group. Or join my newsletter list at HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today. Here's wishing you all the perfect stool.

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